President Obama embarrassed by Islamic State hack

President Barack Obama has been embarrassed by pro-Islamic State [IS] hackers that broke into US Central Command Twitter and YouTube accounts whilst he was giving a speech reassuring the country that it is safe from cyber attacks.

Tweets and videos were posted to the respective accounts with the signature of Isis, another name for IS, and the US Centcom has already come out to state it is taking “appropriate measures” to combat the tweets.

Among the messages posted on the US Centcom Twitter account were: "American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back”, ”Pentagon Networks Hacked! China Scenarios" and "Pentagon Networks Hacked. Korean Scenarios,” according to the BBC.

The tweets also pointed to a “data dump”, which is regularly employed by hackers to prove they gained access to top secret files of some description. The documents appeared to show the names and contact details of military personnel in addition to PowerPoints presentations and maps.

Obama spokesperson Josh Earnest stated that the US is already looking into the hack and an investigation is underway to determine how deep the breach has gone, and he added that there is a big difference between a large scale data breach and a simple Twitter account hack.

The hack came as Obama was reassuring the US public that after a 2014 that saw huge hacks, such as the Sony Pictures attack, the information of the US public is safe. Just as he was reaching the end of the speech the official US Central Command Twitter account began to tweet propaganda from IS. The YouTube account, meanwhile, posted pro-IS videos.

US Centcom shut its accounts down shortly after the hack and no one has come out to officially verify the breach. Further to this, the BBC reports that one of the “leaked” images was readily available on the Pentagon website.